When is Data Available? CTPP 2000 Introduction CTPP Documentation CTPP Frequently Asked Questions

 CTPP 2000 is a special tabulation of responses from households completing the Census long form. The special tabulation is intended to provide data to support a wide range of transportation planning activities. It is the only Census product that summarizes data by place of work and tabulates the flow of workers between home and work. And it is the only source of information with summary tabulations available for traffic analysis zones (TAZ’s) that have been defined by State and regional transportation agencies. 

 A CTPP working group of staff from the Federal Highway Administration, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the Federal Transit Administration, AASHTO and the Census Bureau has been meeting on a regular basis over the past several years to develop the content for CTPP 2000. The working group used the contents of special tabulations from previous Censuses and inputs from staff of several state and local transportation agencies to develop a draft of the standard tabulations. Identification of the CTPP 2000 standard tabulations is based on the following: 
 

1. Data to describe the characteristics of households and their travel to work;
2. Comparability with 1990 CTPP standard tabulations;
3. Comments received in the June 25, 1999 meeting of CTPP users;
4. Data to support travel forecasting;
5. Data to support the FTA New Starts Program;
6. Data to support emerging transportation planning issues such as access to jobs and environmental justice.

 The Working Group has maintained the three sets of standard tabulations as the structure for CTPP 2000: 

• Part 1: At Residence (Home End)
• Part 2: At Workplace (Work End)
• Part 3: Worker Flows

To accomplish these ends, each set of tabulations is organized by its content, i.e., by what is being counted. For Parts 1 and 2, this is the number of persons, number of households, number of workers, number of housing units; for Part 3, this is the number of workers traveling from residence to workplace. Each content will be categorized by its universe where the universes are all persons, all households, all workers, workers in households, workers in group quarters and all housing units. Cross-tabulations of household and worker characteristics by travel characteristics will be reported for the same universes in the "at residence" tabulations and the "at workplace" tabulations to facilitate and support broader analysis of the travel behavior of workers. 

PART 1: AT RESIDENCE TABULATIONS
The "at residence" tables are organized into six distinct groups, reflecting the content: 

1. Characteristics of Persons
2. Characteristics of All Households
3. Characteristics of All Workers
4. Characteristics of Workers by Residence Type
5. Characteristics of Housing Units
6. Computed Tables

1. Characteristics of All Workers
2. Characteristics of Workers in Households
3. Computed Tables

1. Flows and Times
2. Computed Tables

1. Who do I call for more information? Call the CTPP Hotline at 202-366-5000.
2. Who will get the CTPP? The CTPP will be initially distributed by the Census Bureau and USDOT to all State Departments of Transportation and Metropolitan Planning Organizations. Subsequent distribution will be managed by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
3. Will the Data be Available on CDs or DVDs? The CTPP will be produced on CDs. Eventually there may be a demand to produce a national-level CTPP DVD.
4. Will the CTPP Data be on American Factfinder? No, there are no immediate plans to put CTPP data on American Factfinder.
5. How much will the CTPP cost? The CTPP is a pooled-fund product sponsored by the State Departments of Transportation through the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO). It is already paid for. Subsequent costs for reproducing CDs to distribute to data users will be borne by the US Department of Transportation.
6. What software will be bundled with the CTPP? The CTPP2000 data will come with an access tool.  This software is a product that combines Beyond 20/20 and ESRI’s MapObjects.  It allows for data extraction, browsing, exporting, and simple mapping.  The mapping component  does not require you to have another GIS package, and it will be able to print maps and export .shp files.  For more complex data analysis and for complex mapping, you will need to export data files and process them in a spreadsheet, database, statistical, or GIS package.
7. How will I be able to get CTPP data into my GIS? You will be able to extract the tables you want for the geography you want with the CTPP Access Tool (see Question 6 above), and export files in SHAPEFILE format.  Since shapefiles are generic GIS formats, you should be able to open these files in any standard GIS product.
8. What data format will the CTPP be produced in?  The data on the CDs will be in the proprietary Beyond 20/20 format. The CTPP Access Tool software will allow you to export selected data in a number of other formats, including ASCII, xls, csv, dbf, html, and shp. Complete ASCII data sets may be obtained directly from the Journey to Work and Migration Branch of the Census Bureau, along with documentation describing the ASCII file layouts.
9. Where can I find the description of the detailed tables? The table definitions are at:   www.fhwa.dot.gov/ctpp/content.htm
10. Is training available for the CTPP? Because it has become difficult for many people to travel for multi-day training, or out-of-state training, FHWA is developing an “electronic guidebook” to help data users understand both general Census data concepts and specific CTPP data concepts.    This is a self-instruction CD-based guidebook that will run on a PC.  It will take approximately 5 hours of time to cover the 11 modules.
11. Where can I get the 1990 CTPP for my area?  The 1990 CTPP is available on CD (12 CDs for the statewide element, and 33 CDs for the urban elements). These CDs are being distributed FREE of cost by the USDOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics.  You can order the CD-ROMs online at http://products.bts.gov/. You can also order by calling 202-366-DATA(3282).  The 1990 CTPP came with TransVu software for easy data access, however, it does NOT work under Windows 2000 or later versions.  TransVu will work under Windows NT, using a patch available at: 

http://www.bts.gov/btsprod/setupnt.exe. 

BTS is planning to make the 1990 CTPP data available through it’s data access tool called TranStats.  More forthcoming soon. 

The data are stored on the 1990 CTPP CDs as flat ASCII files, so they can be read in directly using C, FORTRAN, SAS, SPSS or other programs.  A data dictionary is available on the CD. 
 

12. Where do I get 1990 TAZs  to use in my GIS? 

There are 3 ways to get TAZ geography that goes with the 1990 CTPP. 
 
a. Get the layer from the ESRI website. The ESRI website has all the 1995 TIGER/Line files converted to shape files available for free. For more information, please visit http://www.esri.com/data/online/tiger/index.html ESRI is also supplying enhanced version of TIGER/Line, and tips on using TIGER/Line along with other spatial databases. 

 
b. Read in TIGER/Line files. Download/order any version of TIGER/Line from 1994-1998 that contains a TAZ layer from the Census Bureau website (http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/)  You can either write a program to convert TIGER/Line file to your GIS or buy any commercial software that can convert TIGER/Line to a GIS Format.  For example, GIS Tools contains a commercial software to convert TIGER/Line to GIS formats. The website is www.gistools.com. 

 
c. Use Caliper software to read files from TransVu and use in Caliper software, or use Caliper software to convert proprietary format into shapefiles.  The boundary files are available in CALIPER (.mdx) format on the 1990 CDROM supplied by BTS.  However, these files are in CALIPER proprietary format.  You can open these files in Maptitude or Transcad and convert the files into shapefile format. 


For users of ESRI software that do not have access to a CALIPER product, a procedure to get 1990 TAZs and attach 1990 CTPP data is posted at http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ctpp/articles.htm